Sleeping Beauty
Who else fell alseep during this? XDDisney’s Sleeping Beauty is closest to the Grimms’ Little Briar Rose. That story was based on Perrault’s The Sleeping Beauty, which itself was inspired by an Italian story called Sun, Moon, and Talia by Giambattista Basile. I’m mostly going to relate this earliest version, but just as a cautionary note, it’s really messed up.
Content Notice: sexual assault features in this story.
In the Basile version, the heroine’s name is Talia. She’s not a princess, but the daughter of a rich lord. There are no fairies to curse and bless her – Perrault added those. Instead, the lord’s astrologers predict that a splinter of flax* will harm her. Like the later versions, the lord bans any hemp or flax. But when she is fifteen, Talia finds an isolated and innocent old woman who is spinning. Since she hasn’t seen spinning before, she is fascinated by it, and eager to try herself. But as soon as she does, she gets a splinter under her nail and “dies.”
There’s no fairy to make everyone fall sleep and grow big thorns around the mansion. Her father just props her up on a velvet throne and abandons the place out of grief.* That’s where Talia is when the King (who is already married) comes by with a hunting party. He sees Talia and tries to wake her up. Failing that, he carries her into a bedroom and rapes her while she sleeps. Then he leaves her there.
It might be a relief for you to know that in the Perrault version, the prince doesn’t even kiss Sleeping Beauty while she’s sleeping.* He kneels before her, and she wakes up. Then they have a wonderful four-hour conversation that is only interrupted when the hungry servants practically drag them down to dinner. I’m serious; that’s really how it goes.
Back to the horrible Basile version. Talia gives birth to a twin boy and girl, which are later named Sun and Moon. Two fairies enter the story to assist with the birth, only to disappear again. Unable to find their mother’s breasts, and without fairies to help them I guess, the babies start suckling her fingers. They suck out the splinter, and she wakes up.* Then the King returns (probably to assault Talia again) and finds her awake with his children. He tells her what he did, but somehow she isn’t bothered by it and they do some romantic bonding. Ew.
Now enter the actual villain of the story, the current Queen (of course).* She realizes her husband is cheating on her, and since she is jealous, she is also super evil. She summons Talia’s children to the castle under the pretense that the King wants to see them, then orders the cook to kill them and serve them as a meal to the King. The cook doesn’t want to do this, so he hides the children and kills a pair of lambs instead. The King eats the lambs and finds them very tasty. He doesn’t know why his wife is acting super creepy.
Then the Queen summons Talia and accuses her of stealing her husband. Talia explains the whole rape part, but the Queen doesn’t listen. Instead she orders the servants to throw Talia into a bonfire. Talia manages to delay her demise by, oddly enough, removing her clothes. She’s down to her last undergarment when the King arrives to save the day. His wife tells him that she fed his children to him, and he has her cast into the bonfire instead. He almost does the same to the Cook, but luckily the Cook’s wife is standing conveniently by with Sun and Moon and hands them over.
Then the King marries Talia and they live… happily ever after?
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